Jessie L. Smith insists that she is and always has been an advocate for animals. She claims that as the state’s former special deputy secretary for dog law enforcement, she oversaw an agency that shut down 75 percent of the state’s so-called puppy mills.

Yet Smith contends that even as she championed such causes, she was the
target of a “campaign of intentional character assassination” by
“radical elements” in the animal welfare community.

Her foes even went so far as to falsely accuse her of sleeping with an Old Order Mennonite dog breeder and protecting him from prosecution, Smith claims in a defamation lawsuit she filed in Dauphin County Court.

The suit, which targets an animal rescue agency, several animal welfare advocates and two central Pennsylvania news organizations, comes little more than a year after Smith was replaced as head of the state’s dog law enforcement agency.

Smith, of Harrisburg, who is now a senior deputy state attorney general, declined comment on the suit. Her lawyer, Andrew W. Barbin, said today that the case focuses on a situation where criticism of a public official crossed the border from a policy debate into slander.

“The law is clear that public officials...have to put up with a certain amount of hostile communication. That’s just part of the job,” Barbin said. “But there are also lines. And in this case we have pled that those lines have been crossed.”

William Smith, head of the Chester County-based Main Line Animal Rescue and a lead defendant in the suit, vowed to fight Jessie Smith’s claims.

“The lawsuit is baseless and we are shocked that a public official is attempting to deny the citizens of Pennsylvania their (free speech) rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution,” William Smith said.

He said the filing of the suit “raises serious concerns regarding our personal freedoms and our attorneys will react accordingly."

Other animal advocates named as defendants in the case are Teresita Delgado, who is identified as a blogger operating from Lancaster, Philadelphia and New Jersey, and Jenny Stephens of Lansdale, Montgomery County, the founder of the North Penn Puppy Mill Watch.

Before taking the dog law post, the 20-year veteran of the attorney general’s office claims she had attained a reputation as an “effective advocate for animals” and had served three years as president of the Humane Society of Harrisburg Area Inc.

Jessie Smith contends in her suit that she was not tied to the “more radical” elements in the animal protection community who argued that the state had not gone far enough to prevent mistreatment of animals. Those elements soon launched a “continuous and relentless campaign of systematic defamation” in which facts about her agency’s efforts were “regularly and intentionally misrepresented.” she claims.

Besides making the untrue allegations of sexual impropriety against her, her attackers claimed in emails, blogs and through other means that Jessie Smith was taking bribes, was guilty of misconduct and was incompetent, according to her suit.

One blogger circulated a posting that included a picture of a horse-drawn buggy with a caption asking whether Jessie Smith and a Mennonite dog breeder whom the blogger wanted to see prosecuted were “getting it on” in the back of the carriage, the suit states.

Jessie Smith also names Lancaster Newspapers Inc. and the York Newspaper Co. as defendants in the case. She claims both allegedly ran a story that included a link to a website on which one of her attackers had posted defamatory material.

The reference to that site “lent unwarranted credibility to what otherwise might have amounted to the unread rantings of extremists,” the suit states. “Both papers should have reviewed the contents of the blogs before promoting them in their articles.”

Ray Shaw, print editor of the Lancaster papers, declined comment on the suit, saying he had not yet seen it.

Although the attacks on her were “baseless and outrageous,” their sheer volume impeded the operation of her office and the enforcement of the state’s dog laws, Jessie Smith contends in her suit. She claims the situation was such that “respect for the importance of the mission” required her removal from the dog law bureau post in June 2011.

At the time, state officials portrayed her removal as a normal part of the transition from the Rendell administration to that of Gov. Tom Corbett. Jessie Smith didn’t comment publicly when she was replaced and Lynn Diehl was named to head a reorganized Dog Law Enforcement Office within the state Department of Agriculture.

Randy Lee, a professor at Widener Law School, said that as a former public official, Jessie Smith faces a higher legal bar in pressing her defamation complaint than would a private citizen. To win such cases, public officials and public figures must demonstrate not only that statements made about them were untrue, but also that they were made with malice, he said.

Lee said the success or failure of Jessie Smith’s claims against the newspapers for publishing the reference to the website that she claims defamed her could depend on several factors, including whether staff at the papers knew what the site contained and how easily the allegedly defamatory content could be found.

The outcome of that argument could hinge on “how many clicks it took to get to those statements,” he said.

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